Nietzsche: The Will to Power. Friedrich Nietzsche

against the extraordinary, of the weak against the strong: meets with one of its finest interruptions in the fact that the rare, the refined, the more exacting, present themselves as the weak, and repudiate the coarser weapons of power.

      346.

      (1) The so-called pure instinct for knowledge of all philosophers is dictated to them by their moral "truths," and is only seemingly independent.

      (2) The "Moral Truths," "thus shall things be done," are mere states of consciousness of an instinct which has grown tired, "thus and thus are things done by us." The "ideal" is supposed to re-establish and strengthen an instinct; it flatters man to feel he can obey when he is only an automaton.

      347.

      Morality as a means of seduction.—"Nature is good; for a wise and good God is its cause. Who, therefore, is responsible for the 'corruption of man'? Tyrants and seducers and the ruling classes are responsible—they must be wiped out": this is Rousseau's logic (compare with Pascals logic, which concludes by an appeal to original sin).

      Refer also to Luther's logic, which is similar. In both cases a pretext is sought for the introduction of an insatiable lust of revenge as a moral and religious duty. The hatred directed against the ruling classes tries to sanctify itself ... (the "sinfulness of Israel" is the basis of the priest's powerful position).

      Compare this with Pauls logic, which is similar. It is always under the cover of God's business that these reactions appear, under the cover of what is right, or of humanity, etc. In the case of Christ the rejoicings of the people appear as the cause of His crucifixion. It was an anti-priestly movement from the beginning. Even in the anti-Semitic movement we find the same trick: the opponent is overcome with moral condemnations, and those who attack him pose as retributive Justice.

      348.

      The incidents of the fight: the fighter tries to transform his opponent into the exact opposite of himself—imaginatively, of course. He tries to believe in himself to such an extent that he may have the courage necessary for the "good Cause" (as if he were the good Cause); as if reason, taste, and virtue were being assailed by his opponents.... The belief of which he is most in need, as the strongest means of defence and attack, is the belief in himself, which, however, knows how to misinterpret itself as a belief in 1God. He never pictures the advantages and the uses of victory, but only understands victory for the sake of victory—for God's sake. Every small community (or individual), finding itself involved in a struggle, strives to convince itself of this: "Good taste, good judgment, and virtue are ours." War urges people to this exaggerated self-esteem....

      349.

      Whatever kind of eccentric ideal one may have (whether as a "Christian," a "free-spirit," an "immoralist," or a German Imperialist), one should try to avoid insisting upon its being the ideal; for, by so doing, it is deprived of all its privileged nature. One should have an ideal as a distinction; one should not propagate it, and thus level one's self down to the rest of mankind.

      How is it, that in spite of this obvious fact, the majority of idealists indulge in propaganda for their ideal, just as if they had no right to it unless the majority acquiesce therein?—For instance, all those plucky and insignificant girls behave in this way, who claim the right to study Latin and mathematics. What is it urges them to do this? I fear it is the instinct of the herd, and the terror of the herd: they fight for the "emancipation of woman," because they are best able to achieve their own private little distinction by fighting for it under the cover of a charitable movement, under the banner bearing the device "For others."

      The cleverness of idealists consists in their persistently posing as the missionaries and "representatives" of an ideal: they thus "beautify" themselves in the eyes of those who still believe in disinterestedness and heroism. Whereas real heroism consists, not in fighting under the banner of self-sacrifice, submission, and disinterestedness, but in not fighting at all.... "I am thus; I will be thus—and you can go to the devil!"

      350.

      Every ideal assumes love, hate, reverence, and contempt. Either positive feeling is theprimum mobile, or negative feeling is. Hatred and contempt are the primum mobile in all the ideals which proceed from resentment.

      B. A Criticism of the "Good Man" of the Saint, etc.

       Table of Contents

      351.

      The "good man" Or, hemiplegia of virtue.—In the opinion of every strong and natural man, love and hate, gratitude and revenge, goodness and anger, affirmative and negative action, belong to each other. A man is good on condition that he knows how to be evil; a man is evil, because otherwise he would not know how to be good. Whence comes the morbidness and ideological unnaturalness which repudiates these compounds—which teaches a sort of one-sided efficiency as the highest of all things? Whence this hemiplegia of virtue, the invention of the good man? The object seems to be to make man amputate those instincts which enable him to be an enemy, to be harmful, to be angry, and to insist upon revenge.... This unnaturalness, then, corresponds to that dualistic concept of a wholly good and of a wholly bad creature (God, Spirit, Man); in the first are found all the positive, in the second all the negative forces, intentions, and states. This method of valuing thus believes itself to be "idealistic"; it never doubts that in its concept of the "good man," it has found the highest desideratum. When aspiring to its zenith it fancies a state in which all evil is wiped out, and in which only good creatures have actually remained over. It does not therefore regard the mutual dependence of the opposites good and evil as proved. On the contrary, the latter ought to vanish, and the former should remain. The first has a right to exist, the second ought not to be with us at all.... What, as a matter of fact, is the reason of this desire? In all ages, and particularly in the Christian age, much labour has been spent in trying to reduce men to this one-sided activity: and even to-day, among those who have been deformed and weakened by the Church, people are not lacking who desire precisely the same thing with their "humanisation" generally, or with their "Will of God," or with their "Salvation of the Soul." The principal injunction behind all these things is, that man should no longer do anything evil, that he should under no circumstances be harmful or desire harm. The way to arrive at this state of affairs is to amputate all hostile tendencies, to suppress all the instincts of resentment, and to establish "spiritual peace" as a chronic disease.

      This attitude of mind, in which a certain type of man is bred, starts out with this absurd hypothesis: good and evil are postulated as realities which are in a state of mutual contradiction (not as complementary values, which they are), people are advised to take the side of the good, and it is insisted upon that a good man resists and forswears evil until every trace of it is uprooted—but with this valuation Life is actually denied, for in all its instincts Life has both yea and nay. But far from understanding these facts, this valuation dreams rather of returning to the wholeness, oneness, and strengthfulness of Life: it actually believes that a state of blessedness will be reached when the inner anarchy and state of unrest which result from these opposed impulses is brought to an end.—It is possible that no more dangerous ideology, no greater mischief in the science of psychology, has ever yet existed, as this will to good: the most repugnant type of man has been reared, the man who is not free, the bigot; it was taught that only in the form of a bigot could one tread the path which leads to God, and that only a bigot's life could be a godly life.

      And even here, Life is still in the right—Life that knows not how to separate Yea from Nay: what is the good of declaring with all one's might that war is an evil, that one must harm no one, that one must not act negatively? One is still waging a war even in this, it is impossible to do otherwise! The good man who has renounced all evil, and who is afflicted according to his desire with the hemiplegia of virtue, does not therefore cease from waging war, or from making enemies, or from saying "nay" and doing "nay." The Christian, for instance, hates "sin"!—and what on earth is there which he does not